Now before anyone says anything I did not go dairy free because I thought it was ‘cool’. A lot of people don’t get to choose this lifestyle and I don’t want to disregard that. However, I did go on it for health reasons which unfortunately this didn’t help.
It was worth a try.
Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to share what I learned/made this week and what dairy-free products I enjoyed.
Day 1 – Tuesday
The first day I didn’t quite anticipate how ‘difficult’ (couldn’t think of a better word because obviously it didn’t hurt me but you get what I mean) this would be. More because my house (parents household) is full of things with dairy, in fact 90% of the things probably had the dreaded dairy in it.
On the other hand it was the first day I tried dairy free milk. I must confess, I have tried almond milk before and absolutely hated it. So, this time, with recommendations from other bloggers I went for oat milk. Specifically Oat-ly’s ‘oat drink’ and I highly recommend it.
The oat drink made porridge taste ten times better with its creaminess and tea didn’t taste horrendous (I still prefer semi-skimmed milk in tea I think, but if I had to go dairy-free for the rest of my days I wouldn’t be angry at drinking purely oat milk).
The one thing I noticed about dairy-free ‘milks’ in general is the shocking price of them. I had to get two cartons of oat milk for a week which were £1.90 each. So, compared to normal milk prices and the amount you’d get in them, it wasn’t exactly cheap. *My student self cringed deeply at the price.*
Day 2 – Wednesday
After the realisation that this would be a bit harder than I first anticipated, mainly because my family kept eating chocolate or ice cream in front of me, I was determined to get into a good routine.
For me that starts with breakfast. As you read above, Oat milk made my porridge A LOT better. Its creamy texture infused with honey (probably a bit too much, but I love the stuff) and topped with strawberries and….. more honey, made my breakfast a 10/10 experience.
Day 3 – Thursday
Lunches and dinner were never exactly a huge problem. Thankfully when I got some dairy free butter I could make decent mash potato and just had to ignore the cheese sitting on the table when we had pasta or fajitas (which was more difficult than I’d like to admit). However, if you want a lunch recommendation Lidl’s pulled pork put into a wrap, then toasted is very tasty and so is a sushi bowl (if you want the recipe or a blog post on lunches let me know).
Day 4 – Friday
I thought I’d dedicate this day to telling you my thoughts on dairy free butter.
As you can see I used the Vitalite Dairy free spread, which after being a devoted lover of butter wasn’t actually as bad as I thought it would be. Mash potato didn’t taste any different, nor did sandwiches or toast. It did have a slight after taste but as a whole I would recommend. I didn’t try it in baking though so I can’t quite tell you how versatile it is.
Day 5/6 – Saturday/Sunday
Now snacking was the thing I struggled with the most. Considering my mum bought a chocolate trifle, opened matchmakers in front of me, and my sister ate crunchy rocks opposite me, I was desperate for a chocolate fix. Thus, I made one of the best chocolate cakes I’ve had/made and it was VEGAN. I’m sharing the recipe in a few days (hence no photos yet, I’ll leave you in anticipation) because I tweaked it but if you want the original its from Nigella’s ‘dark and sumptuous chocolate cake’ available here. It was just the right amount of chocolate and was lovely and moist. I highly recommend making it.
What I did miss with the cake was ice cream, something which I was scared to try considering texture and taste plays a huge part in the icy delight. However, mum found this ice cream in the co-op and I was surprised by how good it was, you definitely couldn’t tell it was dairy-free. (In fact when I stopped being dairy-free I continued eating this and also I didn’t want to waste anything).
Day 7/8 – Monday/Tuesday
I thought I’d put these last two days together so I can round off my thoughts down below while not boring you too much. Adding to the above I highly recommend Oreos and Chocolate Bourbons as some dairy free snacks, plus fruit of course. I think I went through 2+ packs of Oreos (which yes is shameful but I didn’t have much else).
Monday was the day I finally tried Tesco’s free-from ‘White Choc Buttons’, let’s just say I wish I hadn’t. My mum said exactly the right thing to describe them ‘they don’t have the silkiness of ‘normal’ chocolate and have a horrid aftertaste’. Severely disappointing – I know I shouldn’t necessarily expect much when it comes to dairy free chocolate but I wouldn’t recommend them at all, go for a chocolate biscuit (they taste much better).
I have to admit that this is one thing I have noticed when looking at the dairy free/free-from selection is that everything doesn’t look that appealing. Or it makes you feel isolated for not eating a certain ingredient. In my opinion it would be more helpful to compile brands that you wouldn’t think are dairy free/don’t advertise as free-from instead of plastering it all over the packaging.
Final Thoughts – I must say I didn’t feel any radical changes and I don’t weigh myself so I can’t say it altered my weight (which I don’t know how I would feel about promoting anyway) however on the first day I did feel particularly faint during the afternoon but I can’t clarify if that was related. I got hungrier a lot quicker especially before dinner and did get frustrated at how much things had dairy in it which I didn’t quite register before.
However, I did really enjoy the oat milk. Plus I am a very competitive person so even though it didn’t improve my health the way I wanted it to (which I won’t go into detail about) it did make me have something to stick to and think about.
If you have any dairy free recommendations which you’d like to suggest to anyone currently dairy free, please leave them below.
Much love,
Sophie x
Sophie's Edit 
Very interesting post, I’ve had a couple of friends go dairy free recently and I’m not sure if I could as I would be going full vegan since i already don’t eat meat!
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